A Bountiful Feast
by Anera527
Summary: When Thandruil decides to cut the Dwarves' rations down, Bilbo takes matters into his own hands. Mix of both book and movies.


_**A Bountiful Feast**_

It was utterly barbaric. Bilbo could clearly recall Beorn's warning that the Elves of Mirkwood were not like the ones who inhabited Rivendell, but he hadn't quite believed him until now, and the more he thought about it the more incensed he became. He could forgive the Elven King his banishing Thorin and his Company to the dungeons—it was the king's realm, after all, and he had a right to protect his own. He could understand the stern conversations, even if some of the threats he overheard were quite severe. He could even see the logic in taking the Dwarves' armor and outer layers of clothing, although Bilbo could only thank the Valar that there were only the guards around to see as improper a sight as adult males languishing in their long-johns.

But for the life of him, Bilbo would never _ever_ condone or see the sense in the Elf's decree that the Dwarves' food rations would be lessened. One only had to look at the poor fools to see that they were practically wasting away! Indeed, he wasn't entirely sure how Thorin's Company hadn't starved to death yet, what with their frequently only eating twice or three times a day. (He wasn't convinced that this whole stint wasn't a hallucination brought on by his own starved mind, either, but he supposed it was too late to worry about that now.)

_Still_. Bilbo was going to be forced to watch his friends starve to death when they were only being fed once a day, and it made him _angry_.

This, as the Elven King's halls was soon to discover, was to the Woodland Realm's detriment because an affronted hobbit could be a truly irritating nuisance, and the poor Elven King had no idea the monster he had just unwittingly created. For the first time in perhaps all of the history of the Shire, the Baggins's sensibilities and the Took's penchant for mischief were in complete agreement about what should be done.

In other words, the king had created a three-foot-tall monster who's cunning and insidiousness knew no bounds.

~/~/~/~/~

"This is preposterous!" Thorin Oakenshield thundered in his cell; the very bars of his cage seemed to tremble in response and more than one of his Company winced at the answering acoustics. "We have done nothing that has warranted your poor treatment of me and mine, save that we dared to use a trail through your woods that would see us to the other side! To think that there are those who speak fondly of the hospitality of Elves!" To further round out his displeasure he cursed the retreating backs of the elves as they strode out of the dungeons, but they made no outward signs of response and he slumped tiredly against the stone wall behind him in defeat.

"Smells good, at least," Bofur remarked in that hopeful way that a body has when they wish for the impossible to occur.

Thorin's stomach was not the ones that growled. "Don't look at it," he ordered the former sternly.

"Aye, but what are we supposed to do about _smelling_ it?" Gloin asked forlornly from somewhere above him, long-suffering and somewhat short-tempered because of it.

"Maybe we'll catch a cold and we won't be able to breathe through our noses," Ori suggested listlessly, stretched out on the single cot with his head on Dori's thigh.

Sitting innocently in the middle of the dungeons, still hot from the kitchens, a plate of roast venison seasoned with herbs and salt and adrift in a sea of potatoes seemed to taunt them. For three days the entire Company had been given the barest amount of bread and salad and a single wafer of cram Beorn had gifted them, and as their stomachs clenched and grumbled for more an Elf would come in with a plate of hot meat that would set their mouths to watering.

"Compliments from our lord, King Thandruil," the elf would say, their expression twisted with dislike, "provided for when one of you are willing to speak n the other's behalves."

It was a good plan—foolproof, in fact, because when faced with slow starvation and the tantalizing smell of hearty food mere feet away one or more of the Company would break eventually, and there would be no stopping them when they did. Thorin was just wondering if he could bash his head against the wall hard enough to knock himself unconscious, thus solving the problem of smelling, when a familiar voice piped up,

"Not smelling something doesn't help if your stomach still rumbles, you know."

"Bilbo!" Bofur cried joyfully, leaping to his feet to peer through the cell bars to look for their wayward burglar. The next instant the hobbit himself appeared, heading straight towards the plate of food with a rather intense look on his face as he picked it up.

"Absolutely no sense of decorum," Thorin heard him mutter darkly to himself. "Imagine, leaving perfectly good food around with no one to eat it!"

"Bilbo," Thorin began, "where have you—"

"Not the time, Thorin," the hobbit cut across him rather shortly, his feet carrying him to the nearest cell—Kili, if Thorin could see it clearly. Carefully he ladled out a fair portion of the plate's contents and passed it through the bars for the young dwarf to grab. "The guards are changing over right now and we only have a few minutes—I'm sorry, I don't have plates, or even napkins—"

"No, no, Master Baggins!" Gloin said, happily accepting his portion and nearly tearing their burglar's arm off by accident in his haste, "Be pleased that you have served us rightly in these blasted Elves' stead. May the hair on your feet grow ever more thickly!"

"And your beard longer," Bilbo replied readily, moving onwards to the others. He saved a portion for himself at the very last, looking rather sadly at the empty plate, but he brightened when all the Dwarves thanked him profusely. "I'll be back tomorrow," he assured them as he placed the plate exactly where it had been. "We'll see how the Elves like this little puzzle!"

Hobbits, Thorin realized with a sudden uneasy jolt to his stomach, truly were troubling creatures when he saw the eager smile on Bilbo's face as he said those words. He almost felt sorry for the Elves of Mirkwood as the hobbit bid them farewell and left as quickly and quietly as he had come. If it wasn't for the now-empty plate and their sated hunger, Thorin could have been convinced that Bilbo had never been there at all.

"'Pass unseen by most', indeed," Balin chuckled from his cell in the silence.

When the kitchen cook came in to grab the plate four hours later, the way their mouth almost hit the floor almost made Thorin laugh out loud.

~/~/~/~/~

"Master Linder," the apprentice cook asked nervously, "what has been done with the Lord Thandruil's plate of cranberry scones? I had thought we had plated them on the table to cool, but I'm afraid they are no longer there."

Busy rolling out a lump of bread dough, the head cook froze hearing those words. "Where else could they be?" he demanded, quietly panicking. "Surely you're mistaken."

"I'm afraid not, Master. The plate is missing as well."

The panicked feeling grew in the head cook's chest and for a long moment he could only stand and look at his apprentice in horror. "It wasn't mistakenly placed in the pantry?"

"No, Master."

"The window ledge?"

"It's utterly bare."

"The stove top?"

"I've already checked there."

Defeated before they even began. The head cook very nearly face planted into the pile of dough before catching himself at the last. "Be quick—fetch me the ingredients for the scones," he ordered briskly. "We have just enough time to make another batch of them before the king demands them."

No one, after all, would dare to stand between the king and his favorite scones.

~/~/~/~/~

The plate was found in the kitchen an hour later with nary a crumb on it.

If the Dwarves in the king's keeping did not seem so hungry that day— and if the head cook noticed telltale crumbs in more than one atrocious beard—he dared not say.

~/~/~/~/~

"Do Dwarves possess magic?"

"Do not be so gullible—Dwarves have no such abilities that can stand up to an Elf's, let alone _magics_. What makes you think the hairy beasts possess such gifts?"

"The plates of food left out there has thrice been emptied, all at different parts of the day. No guard has yet caught sight of the culprit, but it must be them. The must have the ability to warp metal to their wills!"

"Calm yourself, Linder. Shouting does no good in these circumstances. You seem uncharacteristically stressed—has anything else out of the ordinary happened?"

"The king must not know of this, but another plate of apple muffins went missing yesterday. And…"

"And?"

"There seems to be mice in the pantries."

~/~/~/~/~

"Thorin Oakenshield," Bilbo ground out carefully, "you _wil_l eat this food without complaint, and you _will_ enjoy it. Take it. _Now_."

Exhausted and bedraggled, his clothes mussed and still patchworked by spider web and his honey-colored curls tangled, the hobbit didn't seem quite sane as he glared at the stubborn Dwarf. His foot tapped impatiently on the cold stone floor—pat pat pat—and with his hands on his hips he looked for all the world like a schoolteacher telling off an unruly faunt.

For such a tiny fellow he struck a rather impressive figure, but of course Thorin would never say so aloud. "The Elves suspect foul play," he said instead, refusing to allow a hobbit to win an argument. "If you continue to give us the food from the plate there they will eventually cotton on and start looking for the culprit. They will catch you, and then we will truly be in a lurch." Of course that was when his stomach decided to growl loudly in hunger, and he glared at the food Bilbo held out for him.

"Yes, I know that but that's why they're currently looking for the mice that have apparently infested the kitchens," Bilbo said with an odd, slightly terrifying grin. If Thorin didn't know better, he would say the little beast was _enjoying_ himself. "They're rather large mice, or so I've overheard—and blasted hard to catch sight of, too."

"Rather ingenious," Balin said from his cell. "But do be careful, laddie—if they never find any at all, then they will undoubtedly search for the one responsible for the trick."

"You needn't worry about that, Master Balin. At the moment they're almost completely convinced that you all possess the ability to walk through walls." He shook his head. "Fanciful creatures if I've ever met one, and that's a fact."

"Ruddy creatures," Bofur corrected, grinning as Bilbo, capitalizing on Thorin's mouth opening to make some scathing remark, stuffed the meat in between his teeth. The Dwarf choked and hacked before he swallowed, glaring all the while at their little burglar. "Rather horrid hosts, I might say."

"Yes, well, if they're willing to play with fire then they must be prepared to be burnt from time to time," Bilbo said primly, every inch the respectable Baggins as he utterly ignored Thorin's ugly look and turned to put the plate down. He'd eaten his own share so quickly it was hard to believe and suddenly Thorin recalled how big the pantry at Bag End had been—and that the hobbit lived alone.

"Master Burglar, how… important is food to a hobbit?" he asked carefully.

'Definitely a monster,' he thought to himself, as Bilbo turned back to him with a downright terrifying smile to reply, "Oh, hobbits love nothing better than food, Thorin. We descend on a meal and leave nothing but the _bones_ behind."

He vanished again with another cheery smile, his magic ring giving him free passage anywhere in the realm, and an uneasy silence descended upon the thirteen Dwarves as they all stared down at the plate.

"I forward the motion we keep our hobbit well fed from now on," Kili said, and an immediate murmur of agreement sounded off in response.

~/~/~/~/~

"What was that noise earlier? Guards running up and down the halls, no thought about the feast upstairs. They made my cake fall flat!"

"Prisoners escaped, or so I heard the captain of the guards saying. Never heard him raise his voice in nearly a thousand years!"

"Prisoners escaped? So the Dwarves did have magic! How else could they have escaped from their cells?"

"Dwarves do not have the ability to walk through walls, and if you have any sense you will not repeat such a fanciful idea around his Majesty, either. He is already irate enough that they escaped at all."

"Well, hopefully we have seen the last of such ugly creatures as those, and good riddance, I say! May we never deal with Dwarves again—what are you looking for?"

"… Where has the plate of his Majesty's scones gone?"

~/~/~/~/~

The river had placed several miles between the Orcs that were pursuing them and the Elves who had kept them all captive, and although Bilbo was soaking wet, cold, and stiff from his barrel ride down the rapids he counted his blessings. After all, his plan had worked. He'd managed to smuggle thirteen Dwarves out from underneath the nose of the Elven King—fine work for a burglar, if he did say so himself. He allowed Thorin the honor to figure out what they were going to do now as they resumed their trek to the Lonely Mountain, tired and worn out from the stress of those weeks traversing those Elven halls alone, and Bilbo wanted some time to simply sit in silence and listen to the river and feel the lush grass between his toes.

Finally, the feel of _healthy_ earth, of plants that grew strong and green in the sunlight as they were _intended_ to do.

Those Mirkwood Elves really were most fanciful creatures, but nor were they very bright. Really, Bilbo scoffed to himself, what was the sense of staying in such bitter land when it was safer and beneficial to simply move? The Wandering Days were well past beyond Bilbo's fifty years, but even he recognized when one should pick up and move.

He left Thorin grumbling under his breath about his soaking boots and the bruises he'd gotten from his barrel; his stomach was growling. It would be awhile before the Dwarves were ready to move on again, so he had time for a quick snack before they continued on their way.

He'd already eaten most of them but hidden away in an oil-skin bag that he'd hidden underneath his shirt were the slightly smashed remaining cranberry scones made for the Elven King lifted at the last moment from the kitchens.

Burglar Baggins indeed. Every bite was _delectable_.


End file.
